A Certain Parallel Route
by Encendrel
Summary: Shintaro only wants to live a peaceful, logical life. But when his family decides it would be a great idea to adopt three strange, red-eyed children, he realizes, he really just can't catch a break, can he? (Re-writing of What Really Matters)
1. Disjointed Family

**Finally, this is the rewrite of What Really Matters. **

**Rather than the humor-based, cute, and senseless mess I wrote earlier, I'm trying to write the stellar story of a boy learning to be human.**

**Oh, but the change shouldn't be _too_ shocking. I have no interest in writing a humorless or melodramatic 'angsty teen' writing.**

**(You know, the kind where they spend about two paragraphs describing the main character's body or something like that)**

**The chapters of the original have been saved, I'll release them once I finish writing this story so you can see what it came from.**

**I don't own the Kagerou project.**

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><p>He sighed and turned away.<p>

He'd been looking at three, red-eyed children just a moment earlier.

Kisaragi Shintaro.

Genius boy with 158 IQ. Supposedly depressed, neurosis bordering psychosis. Black hair, pale-ish skin, and eyes adults commonly referred to as 'rotten' or 'dead'.

Why couldn't they all see how pointless this was? To his mother- In the first place, he wasn't _depressed_, so to speak, he was simply being realistic about the world. No matter what the doctors said about him, he knew himself better than anyone else.

And even if he did have said mental conditions, why would having more siblings change anything? His sister was enough.

There was something, too. He knew that his mother had a good job and could support six people, but wasn't _actually doing so_ a little overkill?

Then again, they had the same eyes as his sister. This could also be a confidence building activity, to get Momo to stop thinking herself a monster after an _incident_, seeing as they had no father figure to do so.

His mother was a clever woman, he'd give her that. He had to get it from somewhere. However, this changed nothing for him.

He'd much rather disappear from this world.

Cementing such thoughts, the eight-year old boy simply walked away without saying a word.

It wasn't as if they needed him.

* * *

><p>To be fair, Shintaro had good reasons for thinking like this.<p>

For an eight-year old, he simply seemed too... dead, was that the word? It was almost as if he'd seen the world through a screen. As if he was only onlooking from afar, he was unable to get involved in the affairs of others.

That wasn't to say he was lonely, of course. He had no interest in such things.

"Onii-chan, who are they?" He heard this from behind him.

He tilted his head. They were currently in his room (a rather boring white room with a single twin bed and a computer- in other words, a room lacking character), and he was lying down on his bed, sister at the door.

Said sister in question had black hair and orange eyes, though they sometimes turned red and then he couldn't turn away from her, strange as it sounds.

She had quickly learned that there was nothing to gain from talking to her brother and only did so if both their father and mother were busy.

Well, their dad was now permanently unavailable and their mom was caught up with three kids.

"They're your siblings, I suppose." He stated this blandly and tonelessly as if it was really none of his business.

"E-eh? When did that happen?!" Momo's reply was as such.

"...Just today? Maybe you should go and greet them."

Despite his suggestion, she looked down and shuffled her feet a little.

"...What is it now?"

"...Mou, there's no point if Onii-chan doesn't also come..." Puffing her cheeks, she looked hopefully at him.

She was... scared? It was as if she'd suddenly developed a million insecurities over the span of one vacation. At the same time, they should be able to bond over many things.

Not to mention, the house always seemed really empty...

He rolled his eyes and stood up.

Not even looking in her direction, he carried himself through the door.

* * *

><p>"This is Kisaragi Shintaro. He's your older brother now."<p>

He stared forward passively.

To be honest, his personality wouldn't really match with any of them. He wasn't stubborn in his pursuits and was always willing to take the easy way out. People may say that 'life should be a challenge' but the right phrase should be 'work smarter, not harder.'

And also, why should he treat them differently from any other person he'd met? It wasn't as if they were going to kill him in his sleep, and he hadn't even given his sister special treatment aside from actually talking to her.

The black-haired boy's eyes widened in surprise, showing off their red color-weren't they brown only moments earlier?- before averting his eyes in... shame? Regret? It didn't matter.

He impassively declared, after waiting a moment longer: "Shouldn't you be telling me your names?"

The first one to step up (rather metaphorically, seeing as no one seemed to actually want to move) was the black-haired boy who he'd observed earlier.

"U-um, I'm Seto Kousuke!" He practically yelled. Wow. Talk about an awkward introduction. "M-my introduction wasn't awkward!" Shintaro took a moment to process the fact that the kid seemed to have reacted to his thoughts.

He raised an eyebrow. Seto flushed and seemed to shrink in on himself.

Strange. Well, it wasn't as if the kid could read minds or something.

...And as if he could, he jerked his head back awkwardly.

However, Shintaro made up his mind to ignore the weird kid until a later date.

He turned to the blonde kid. "What's your name?"

"Kano..." The kid whispered as if deep in thought. "Shuuya..."

Slightly better.

...What? It wasn't as if Shintaro was determined to make an evaluation of everyone's first impressions on him.

And lastly...

"You?"

The green-haired girl tried to make herself small, but seeing as he had already dedicated his attention to finding out all of their names, he wasn't about to lose sight of her.

Unless...

"I'm Kisaragi Momo! Nice to meet you."

...Wasn't she trying too hard? Then again, despite her strange ability to attract attention, she was actually painfully shy...

Oh, when thought about like that, it sounded much worse.

He stated his thoughts out loud.

"Momo, if you put that much effort into your introduction, no one will want to be friends with you..."

And in reward for his efforts, what did he get?

Pain.

That is, to say, a rather hard kick in the shins.

Really, should you be talking about _making friends, Onii-chan?_"

In a rather chilling fashion, she forced her brother into submission.

Ah, such is the life of an unfortunate genius.

In a completely objective way, of course. He wasn't one to boast about his skills or anything.

Well, outside of his thoughts, Momo was continuing with her rather overbearing friendliness.

The worst part is that no one could look away. It was almost painful.

"Oh! We need to know everyone's birthday! We need to go out and get to know each other."

Had anyone thought to tell her she was getting ahead of herself, maybe she would have blinked.

Well, more likely they would be facing the same predicament Shintaro had found himself in moments before.

(The one about pain, not the one about introspection.)

Momo had stopped shortly after, as if noticing something that should have been seen a long time ago.

"...Onii-chan, their eyes are like mine."

"Wow, way to state the obvious."

He found himself on the floor, clutching something rather important.

"U-um, do you..." Momo trailed off nervously. "C-can you do w-weird things like I can?"

That was one way to put it, he supposed.

No one seemed comfortable with answering. Momo herself was shifting on the spot as if she wanted to run away.

That was why Shintaro, the wisest guy anyone would ever meet, took it upon himself to divert the topic.

"I still don't know your name. By the way, Momo, this is Kano Shuuya and that's Seto Kousuke.

The green-haired girl finally found a shred of confidence and said-

"Kido Tsubomi" before shrinking back.

This was why he didn't need any more siblings, you know?

In any case, it represented the beginning of a Certain Parallel Route.

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><p><strong>A Certain Parallel Route, huh...<strong>

**Actually, the title shortens to CPR, a life saving technique. I was actually considering making it something like 'EYES' but how would that work out? "End of Year Exams?" Hehe, who knows.**

**Well, to save lives is to be a hero. To have compassion (empathy, for those jackasses who appear to lack feelings) is to be human. So I guess CPR is representative in its own way.**

**I hope that this is a step in the right direction. Leave a review and tell me what you liked/hated.**


	2. Pragmatic Bravery

**So, this was mainly written in that awkward time in the middle of the night where you're too hungry to fall asleep but too sleepy to make food...**

**I don't own the Kagerou Project.**

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><p>Shintaro yawned, feeling tired despite it being only midday.<p>

Sure, it wasn't exactly great to repeat the same process every day and wait for time to change but that kind of haze had kept him moving all the same.

But for today...

_What if I did something different?_

It was a random suggestion coming from left field, but the more he entertained the thought, the more he grew attached to it. However, part of him was ready to go back to his 'everyday' afterwards no matter what.

He had recently acquired 3 younger siblings. There was a surplus of empty rooms around their house due to various factors (a missing member of the family leaves empty rooms) so it wasn't as if his space was being encroached upon.

Ridiculous as it was, Momo's attempt at enthusiasm had worked fairly well. All of his younger siblings joined under a common affliction to form a close group. It really was good for Momo.

(And it wasn't as if he was jealous, really.)

Shintaro, for all his smarts, wasn't good (totally abysmal) at handling other people. This posed a lot of social problems but he figured it would be okay, other than his cynical need to analyse everyone. Trust didn't exactly come in spades.

In fact...

He knocked on the door of the room he knew belonged to Seto.

It was really bothering him that Seto seemed to have access to his inner thoughts. At the same time, he felt some sick curiosity as to what this power actually was, as he lived with someone holding such 'powers'.

Despite getting no answer, he entered anyways.

It was only once he was inside that it occurred to him he'd no clue what to actually say.

_Oh, Kousuke, right? Can you read minds?_

Haha. Yeah. No.

"I-I can read minds."

He whipped his head around when he heard the shy voice. Seto was sitting on his newly acquired bed and hugging his newly acquired pillow.

Shintaro stared with wide eyes. "Really... What am I thinking right now?"

_Haha... He'll never guess..._

"'Haha...He'll never guess.'" Seto stated blandly. Shintaro blinked.

He was tempted to call it a fluke, but it was okay if it wasn't as well.

He couldn't bring himself to just walk out after hearing something like that.

...Well, he _could, _but he would have to interact with these people later so he might as well make it easier.

He sat down on the bed next to Seto.

At that point, he wasn't sure what to say. It was a little awkward, but he didn't want to leave at this point.

"...When could you read minds?"

He might learn something, too.

Something important.

* * *

><p>For reference most kids didn't come to solid conclusions about who they were until they were at least 12. From the time they were born to the specified age, they would decipher their physical world, learn to reason, and gradually grow more mature.<p>

Shintaro had finished that growth when he was six. Aside from lack of physical skills (due to age, not actual physical inhibition) he could be considered an adult based on pure maturity. He didn't lack empathy, but it was too easy to consider himself 'outside' of the general human psyche.

Naturally, that didn't mean that he was wise. Being able to reason was one thing, deciding on what was _right_ was another. Being able to see so many other paths meant that he would never see the benefit of taking the hard way. Being too stuck on the past and present, he would surely be unable to focus on the future.

This was however, one of those moments where reason decided to take an off day and his empathy ability decided to kick in... as much as it could, seeing how miserably jaded it was. Fully developed, but skewed so far in one direction one could barely make sense of it.

Unfortunate, seeing as he had a sobbing mind reader in front of him, he wasn't sure what to _do_.

"Just a monster..." Ugh. He hated those words. The boy's self hatred was really getting to Shintaro. He was kind of stuck there at the moment, ditching the kid would only make it worse.

Why did he hate those words, though? It surely wasn't as if it was the truth, and he couldn't care less about the self evaluations of others.

Even if he didn't have the answer, though... Do what you can and face the consequences later?

Once before his father's departure, he'd learned that people didn't mean what they said and didn't say what they meant. That 'adult world', chained to its own fate, hated him for an ability he'd never asked for.

"But I only see Seto, hm?"

He was only slightly taller, but he patted the boy's black hair, the boy widening his eyes and rubbing them with his sleeves.

"I don't know what those others might have thought, but when I met you the other day, I didn't see a monster."

Perhaps it would change. Perhaps he was wrong even now.

But until then, this was his 'answer', transparent as it was.

* * *

><p>So, then. Not much after such a strange turn of events. It wasn't as if there was some sort of 'life changing event' involved in talking with an adopted sibling. That kind of cliche was entirely too predictable and didn't occur in real life.<p>

Falling into an ordinary lapse, his day-to-day events were still the same. The other two children were still kinda unapproachable. At the very least, Momo was having fun, or something...?

Leaving the house, he decided to walk around the city. It was sometime near fall, his favorite time to be out. He wore a black zip-up hoodie and blue jeans, like most people nowadays did.

"Shintaro-nii, where are you going?" Seto blinked curiously. Shintaro turned around and stared through the door frame.

Shintaro tilted his head curiously. "Out." Jerking his thumb towards the magnificent outdoors, he stepped through.

"K-Kaa-san said that we shouldn't go out alone." Shintaro heard the painfully shy voice of Seto. Maybe it was just him, but it seemed that Seto was puffing his cheeks out in frustration. Oh wait, had he heard Shintaro's thoughts about his strangely scared voice?

In any case, he wasn't much for the rules, understanding how to do things himself, but...

"Well, want to go with me?" He shrugged. Seto seemed apprehensive, but his true desire was really written all over his face. Despite being a mind-reader, he couldn't even hide his own thoughts, huh?

"U-um, but there are people out there who don't like me..."

Shintaro sighed.

"Well, I'm leaving anyways."

Perhaps it was easy to tell, but Seto ended up following him.

* * *

><p>Shintaro sat on the swings and swung back and forth tiredly. He somehow wished he had the limitless energy Seto seemed to contain within him, but after running around for the past hour or so, he found that it was simply impossible.<p>

"Haah... Haah." He took deep breaths. Seto sat on the swing next to him.

"Aw, Shintaro-nii... Can't we play some more?"

The genius kid shot a sideways glance and didn't say anything, but tried to send a clear message that he simply couldn't outpace the mind-reader.

"Oh... Should I slow down?" He tilted his head.

Shintaro stood up off the swing. "Haah... Could you... please?" He then blinked, as if remembering something. "Ah, and Kousuke..." He turned to face his sibling, laying a quieting gesture over his lips. "Keep your power a secret, please?"

Seto, despite only having a slight grasp of Shintaro's intention, agreed easily.

Shintaro gave a heartfelt smile (which was very strange, in his honest opinion, as well as stunning Seto for a second) and pulled his brother off the swing. "Let's play something easier, shall we?"

* * *

><p>"Kousuke, apologize." Shintaro sighed. He shook out his jacket, wiping the dirt off of it. Seto had tears in his eyes, and Shintaro couldn't help but feel like he was going to be doing some damage control.<p>

As for the crime scene, it was a brown-haired girl and a few crumpled pieces of origami. From what he could see, her parents were probably nearby, the suspicious looking lab-coat man and the housewife person, if he was just going by first classifications. Shintaro waited around for Seto to calm down, having put too much force into the game of tag and sending Shintaro flying into said girl and her origami... somethings. Perhaps it would be easier to tell if he hadn't landed on them.

"S-sorry!" Seto did that awkward shouting thing he tended to do when he was afraid. He attempted to clean up the origami pieces, but Shintaro stayed his hand. Now wasn't really the time for that. Shintaro, attempting the best apologetic face '_as he imagined one would look like_' held out a hand for the girl. _  
><em>

Looking back at the strange pair of adults for a second, he raised an eyebrow. "Did we mess something up?" That was silly, of course they had. But he learned from watching adults to try not to address the problem directly when talking to strangers.

"My origami cranes..." The girl pouted, and Shintaro made a noise of recognition. That was what they were. Well, luckily, she didn't seem to be crying like his little brother was, which was always a plus. Jeez, he really just wasn't suited for this comforting thing.

"U-um, I can help you fold some new ones if you need..." Seto offered. Ah, well _now_ he was stuck.

He crouched down and picked up the pieces of paper. It wasn't much, but he needed to clean up, and for some reason he just couldn't get comfortable under the gaze of the lab-coat man.

She stared at him wide-eyed, but nodded happily seconds later, taking out some square sheets of paper. Shintaro watched closely. From what the adults said, he could probably do it after watching once.

"Thanks!" She grinned happily, in a much less reserved way than any smile he'd seen before. Or maybe he just lived in a household full of negativity, that was more likely.

Grasping a square sheet for himself, he talked quietly.

"Why do you want to make these anyways?" They had no practical use, in his opinion.

Seto tapped his arm. "Shintaro-nii, they're fun to make."

Ah. Perhaps he was the weird one for thinking in such a pragmatic way. But was that really all it took to do something so tedious?

The girl spoke up, though.

"Don't you know?" She spoke happily while folding a red paper crane. "If you fold 1000 of these, your wish will come true."

He raised an eyebrow. "And that is...?"

"A secret."

_Wishes, huh..._

* * *

><p>"Kousuke, you're all dirty." He wrinkled his nose. The sun was setting and a chill had set in an hour or so earlier. Seto shivered.<p>

For some reason, Ayano (as the girl had introduced herself in a far too trusting manner) had asked if they would go back to the park tomorrow. Some force of fate really seemed to want him to go, or maybe that was just Seto agreeing for him.

"Shintaro-nii, it's so cold..." Seto frowned and looked at his t-shirt. Oh, was that the same one he was wearing when Shintaro had first seen him? Well, Shintaro supposed that Seto could actually wear most of his (as Seto was too tall, not that he was too short or anything).

Staring forward in deep thought, he snapped his fingers. "Ah. Kousuke, wait here." Shintaro looked through the windows of the buildings, and checked the money he had in his wallet.

He nodded his head when he saw a plain white hooded jacket. It might have been six or seven sizes to big, but winter was setting in. It was also really fluffy, so there was that.

Using basically all of his pocket money (he was trusted with a lot of it) he checked out the jacket.

Seto, unsurprisingly, was still waiting there. Shintaro thrust the warm cloth into the mind reader's hands. "It's getting cold, so it's only practical that you have this." He looked away, as if not wanting to believe that he was giving out gifts of all things, but that was the truth of the matter.

Seto looked at him in thought. "Ts..." Raising his hand to his chin, he snapped his finger. "Tsundere! That's the word!"

Shintaro choked on his spit.

* * *

><p>A year had passed, and he still felt not much had changed. He was nine, his siblings were seven, and he was still dragged along to meet Ayano at the park. He felt like that was more of Seto's thing, though.<p>

Momo had become more outgoing, but also more annoying, as if it was proportionate. He still couldn't figure out the right way to talk to Kido, and Kano seemed to get his kicks from arguing with Shintaro, However, Kano was willing to listen, which was the important part.

The world wasn't changing just yet.

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><p><strong>AND YET I STILL CANNOT MAKE A CHAPTER OVER 3000 WORDS FOR THIS ARCHIVE. I'd call it writer's block, but it's kinda more like stalling.<strong>

**I chose to start with Seto because Shintaro isn't very good at that talking thing and Seto can finish his sentences for him. Yeah.**

**By the way, fuck wisdom teeth. Seriously.**


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